just you and me (or thank the stars the kids aren't home)
by thir13enth
Summary: whoever said that parents couldn't find time to date? —shallura; domestic fluff. inspired by tumblr starrycove's shallura children.


to **starrycove** (on tumblr) for Shallura Holiday Exchange 2017

 _I'm sorry I'm so late and made you wait so long for your gift! I had been working on one idea (which I will end up dedicating to you anyway later on this year) but became so inspired by your shallura children that I had to incorporate them somehow into the "cute date" prompt you requested, of course featuring the very three children that keep them very busy. I hope you enjoy! I made entire headcanons just based off of images of your shallura children and I hope they suit how you may envision them as well.  
_

 _I'm very grateful to be able to have this opportunity to gift such a star in the shallura fandom. I am hard-pressed to find a more fortunate fandom than the shallura one, with all of our amazing creators. You are such a positive influence and dedicated artist and so incredibly inspiring. Thank you for all that you do!_

* * *

It's an impossible feat, but yes — taking advantage of Shiro's mother's visit to Japan, and after coordinating Alfor's babysitting job, Juni's piano lessons and sleepover party, Allura's free nights from the hospital, Shiro's ground time from piloting and ensuring he's in his home city, and finally begging Keith and Lance to take care of Kuro — Allura and Shiro finally have the house to themselves to enjoy _for_ themselves.

And they have been waiting for this very moment, for just the two of them, for a _very_ long time.

And they are _very_ determined to have the most perfect date they've had in a _very_ long while — even if it's just at home, and even if they're just going to end up curled up on the couch in each other's limbs in front of the TV, it's going to be perfect because they're spending time together and that is more than what they usually can ask for on a normal week of their family's busy life.

Of course, even from the start, not everything goes as well as Shiro hoped to plan: Case in point, Shiro still finds himself standing in front of a pot of lukewarm water, impatiently waiting for the water to boil over so he can boil the udon noodles he's making, which in of itself was his backup plan for if he suddenly found his time short.

So no, he is nowhere near done with cooking dinner as he hoped to be by the time Allura got back from work and their date night would officially begin.

As if on cue, Allura spills into the house, closing the garage door behind her. She brings in a gust of the frigid winter air with her, as well as a bottle of champagne, which she holds up like a trophy.

"I got us some wine!" she announces, setting the bottle with a strong clunk onto their dining room table.

"Perfect," Shiro replies. He turns to smile at her, watching her take off her boots and move them back out to the garage, before turning his eyes back to the pot, dropping in the block of parboiled noodles.

He feels her arms slide around his waist and her lips plant a kiss just under his jaw. The ends of her hair are damp from the snow and the icy cold tickles the fraction of his skin around his neck that aren't covered by the loose gray sweater he's wearing, reminding him that indeed, it's fuck cold outside but damned he'd be if he shies away from her embrace.

She looks over his shoulder. "What are you making?"

"Well, I was going to make katsu," he explains sheepishly. "But then I got back late and I also forgot to thaw the meat so I've decided on udon instead…" He gestures to the half-done noodles. "But I'm still not done cooking."

"Udon sounds just as delicious," she agrees, patting him on the back and stepping away to unwind herself from her scarf. "Much better for our health than katsu in the long term anyway."

Allura continues to peel her outer layers off, making her way further into the house — probably to the bedroom to put her things down. Meanwhile, Shiro frantically tries to hurry along the cooking process, dumping noodles into the strainer over the sink and finally adding them to the rest of the soup before Allura returns, now dressed in her pajamas.

"Done!" he victoriously exclaims, holding a ladle over the soup and urging her to come taste test the concoction.

Eyes bright, she comes to his side immediately, and he blows the soup to cool it down before bringing the ladle to her lips so she can sip.

At this, her smile widens. "Perfect," she congratulates him, and then pulls his head down gently to reward him with a kiss.

Some of the soup from her lips transfers to his tongue, and he scrunches his eyebrows together upon tasting it. "You don't think it's a little salty?"

But Allura's already on the other side of the kitchen, grabbing them two large bowls from the cabinet. "Well, that's how I like my soup," she replies.

He glances back at the soup, momentarily pondering to add some water to the pot, but eventually decides not to. He shuts off the stove and brings the entire pot of udon with him, a trail of steam rising from the soup the whole way, before he rests it at the center of the dining table.

Allura sits herself down, nonetheless in front of her favorite soup bowl, the one Alfor made for her on Mothers' Day eight years ago when he was still exploring pottery as a hobby.

(Judging by the look of the uneven bowl and the nondescript imagery painted along the sides, it's probably redundant to say that Alfor did not continue making ceramics after that.)

"Oh, I'm so excited," she says, clasping her hands together and skootching her chair closer to the table. "I've been starving _forever_ , just waiting to come back home to eat your food."

In the moment, she looks so adorable, he can't help but cross the dining table to stand behind her chair, draping her arms over her shoulders and resting his chin onto her head. "And here I was, thinking that maybe you'd be excited to see _me_."

She turns her head up to meet his eyes, albeit upside down. "Food first, Takashi later," she declares, but the way she looks at his lips tells him she's just as eager to get the eating out of the way so they can get to the rest of their time together.

They stay there, staring at each other for a little bit, before she suddenly raises her watch up to her eyes. Her eyes bug out and she shows him the time.

"We only have three hours left before we have to pick up Kuro!" she reminds him, shuffling him along to his seat at the table. "Eat! We're already behind schedule!"

He laughs. "Okay, okay." He starts to ladle soup into both of their bowls. "I forgot to get chopsticks. Could you get them?"

She gives him a mischievous look, leaning back further into her chair. "Maybe…" she says, tapping her finger on her chin. "But I've already sat down. You'll have to pay."

Rolling his eyes, he gives in. "Sure," he replies, and as he places her full bowl of soup next to her, he does his due, dropping her a kiss.

"Pleased to do work with you, sir," she hums between their lips as they part. She picks herself up, tapping his chest as she does so, off to grab two pairs of chopsticks from the kitchen drawer.

And in perfect timing, they both get back to their seats, a hot bowl of udon in front of them and a pair of chopsticks in their hands, grinning at each other through rising steam from their freshly made dinners.

"Happy anniversary, Allura," he says.

She beams. "Happy anniversary, Shiro," she replies.

He thinks to say something romantic and meaningful, like "I can't believe it's been this long and that we're this far in life" or "We might not spend a lot of time together right now but I'm still excited to spend the rest of whatever time I have left with you" or even something as simple as "I love you," but as always, the kids come first.

"So, how was Kuro's soccer match over the weekend?" he asks as he takes up his first bite.

"Oh," she says, waving her hand at him as she slurps. "Perfectly," she continues once her face lifts away from the soup. "He scored his team four goals." She gloats, very content with Kuro's accomplishment. "Our plan to make him a star athlete is still in place."

"I'm sure the Altean genes help," Shiro replies.

"Very true."

"And your involvement," he adds with a smile. "You know you make a great coach, right?"

"Yes," she retorts cheekily. "Every time I body-slammed you down while we were training on the Castle of Lions, I _absolutely_ knew that."

Shiro reflects for a moment, realizing just how not-so-long ago the Great War was, although his mind has already tucked it in his very far and distant memories. And yet, he still remembers many things down to the details from those many years ago.

Well, _some_ things more than others. Like what would happen _after_ Allura body-slammed him down onto the training mat.

"You mean like when we made out instead of train?" he teases.

"You mean when I was giving you a _rest_ day," she assures him, pulling up another bite of udon out of her soup with her chopsticks. "Anyway, I'm delighted by Kuro's progress. I believe he'll remain a forward for the tournament, no matter what that Sophie thinks."

Shiro raises his eyebrow. "Sophie?"

She scowls, piercing a fishball with the tips of her chopsticks. "Oh, just another one of the soccer moms," she explains. "Her son was one of the forwards before Kuro joined the team. Last week, the coach decided to move Kuro to forward and her son to midfield. And Kuro has only forward for the last game but she's been acting very intolerably towards me ever since the switch!" Allura purses her lips, picking a mushroom out of her soup. " _She_ thinks I sweet-talked the coach but she just needs to realize that Kuro is a better forward than her son."

Shiro can't help the amused smile that flits over his lips.

"You _are_ charming," he reminds her. "I'd probably think the same if I was Sophie."

Allura rolls her eyes. "You just have to come to Kuro's next soccer tournament. You'll see how ill-suited her son is to playing forward."

"Oh, I'm definitely coming so I can see this Sophie and you," he says, grinning. "When is his next tournament?"

She thinks for a moment before picking up her phone and searching her calendar. "Next Thursday," she tells him. "Aren't you usually doing the international flight on Thursday evenings? You'd have to leave for the airport a little earlier to get all the preparation before the flight done, no?"

"Well, I don't _have_ to get there earlier, and they just let me go through security these days because they don't want to deal with _this_ ," he explains, lifting his right arm. "But if not, I'll see if I can switch with someone. I wouldn't want to miss your next feud."

"Oh, that won't be a feud," she assures him. "It would be disingenuous of me to have chosen such a mediocre opponent."

He laughs, almost choking on his bite of udon.

She smiles, watching him eat for a moment. "Juni hasn't seen you in a while," she suddenly says.

Shiro looks off to the side, thinking to himself. He can't remember the last time he saw his daughter, but it feels like it's been about two weeks. "Yeah," he agrees. "I mean, she has a pretty busy schedule already — I can't imagine how it's going to be when she gets older."

"Well, our daughter has a universe of passions and boundless amounts of energy, so I let her do what she wants," Allura tells him. "According to Alfor, she's still doing gymnastics and playing the saxophone, but she's apparently added on learning Altean at the Altean Language School to her list of afterschool activities." She shrugs. "Well, Alfor's had to drive her around to all of her activities so there's no additional inconveniences for me."

Shiro looks at her weirdly. "Is Alfor even old enough?" He doesn't think he's yet realized just how quickly the years went by since Alfor was an infant.

"Alfor is certainly of age to drive," Allura assures him. "And he's miles beyond mature for his age. Which I'm very grateful for because otherwise we'd have to go through all of that mess to find a caretaker again and the _last_ time Lance came to babysit —"

"Yes, yes, I know, Lance taught them bad Altean phrases," Shiro finishes her sentence. "But that was six years ago, and Alfor never picked any of that up."

"Kuro most certainly did," she mutters. She sighs exasperatedly. "Well, Kuro just absolutely _adores_ Uncle Lance so I guess I have that to be grateful for. Otherwise, I would not have been able to convince Kuro to leave the house and he would be here playing video games in the living room and we would not have the place to ourselves."

He looks up at her, watching her eat for a moment before smiling. "I miss this. Just you and me."

"Right, if only it wasn't for the _kids_."

She says this with such despise it makes him laugh. "I suppose we're just going to have to wait until they go to college," he says.

"Yes, have them go _far far_ away," Allura immediately agrees. "How many years more is that?" She counts on her fingers. "I suppose for Juni that would be about ten more years."

"Maybe she'll skip a grade or two," he says. "She's bright."

"Good plan," she says, pointing at him. "I like how you think. And then hopefully Alfor doesn't return home after college and sets off to work somewhere also _far far_ away."

"You know you'll miss them."

"I will absolutely miss them," she undoubtedly says, lifting her bowl to her face to drink the remainder of her soup. "But I also hate arranging the suns and moons and stars and a comet's orbit to figure out time for just the two of us."

Allura finishes her meal before he does, so she gets up from the table to start washing the dishes. On her way back to the sink, she kisses his cheek. "Remind me to thank your mother for teaching you how to cook well when she comes back from Japan next month."

"Mmm," Shiro agrees, making a mental note to himself to remember to check the date of his mother's flight back home so that he could pick her up from the airport.

Allura sets her bowl into the kitchen sink. "Ugh, one of our beloved kids has left their unwashed bowls in the sink," she proclaims, staring at the supposed dishes. "I can't even tell what they might have eaten…"

"Maybe whatever leftovers I got them from yesterday," he suggests.

"No…" she says. "It looks more like some concoction of mac n' cheese."

"Good choice," Shiro replies. "Like father, like child."

"Well, let's hope they also eventually learn to keep the house tidy, like you."

Suddenly remembering something, Shiro quickly slurps the rest of the contents of his bowl before dropping his dishes with Allura and opening the refrigerator wide to produce a small box from the top shelf. He comes back to Allura, showing her.

"So I stopped by that bakery you like before coming home. Got you cake," he tells her, opening the box a little so she could peek inside.

"Oh!" she exclaims, smiling up at him. "Is _this_ why you weren't able to finish cooking dinner on time?"

He raises his free hand in defense. "Hey, if _everything_ had gone as planned, I would have still had enough time to make the katsu with a rapid meat thaw," he replies. "The flight gate was delayed, the team wanted to have a quick debrief, the highway traffic was terrible, _and_ the bakery had to make a fresh batch of batter."

She turns her smile away, the tops of cheeks still glowing a bright magenta.

He kisses her on the temple and goes to set the cake on the counter, bringing out two spoons.

Done with the dishes, she turns, wiping her hands on the kitchen towel before coming over to him. "Is the cake small enough that we can just finish it tonight?"

"If you're asking if we need plates, then no."

"Splendid," she swoons, bringing him into an embrace. "Thank you for this."

"I won't deny a princess of her well-deserved cake," he says, passing her a spoon and removing the cake from its wrappings.

The cake was simple — small and circular with white cream frosting and small rosettes outlining the top and the bottom. And, of course, in classic Shiro habit to avoid prolonged conversations with whoever was cake-decorating that day, absolutely no words written on top.

She gasps, taking the sight in with her hands clasped. "Chocolate?" she asks him, eyes wide.

"Red velvet."

" _Divine_ ," she murmurs, and goes forward to take the first bite. "Glorious," she says afterwards, her eyes rolling back. "I hope you tipped them well. They have brought good honor to the rest of the human race for their work."

He snorts, taking a bite to witness for himself as well.

Shiro would never admit it to himself but he is most absolutely a sweet-tooth, and this cake most absolutely reminds him of the fact.

"Okay, you're right," he concedes. "We _have_ to order this for Alfor's birthday."

Allura's eyes almost pop out. "Alfor's birthday! I nearly forgot!" she exclaimed. "What are we doing?"

"We're bringing everyone together on Saturday night, and I'm just going to pick up a cake before coming back from the airport," he replies. He looks at her alarmed face for another moment and then reminds her, "We've already got something for him, remember? That series of books he likes?"

She breathes a sigh of relief. "Oh, yes. Completely forgot. Thank the stars for our past selves thinking it was a good idea to get that done before this week."

Then she seems to remember something else. "The wine!" she exclaims, looking back at the bottle she had brought in earlier in the night. "We _must_ have some of it after I spent all that time browsing the store trying to decide." And on her way to uncorking the bottle, she's reminded yet again of something else. "Oh, and we were going to finish the season finale of The Sixth Dimension together! I've been _dying_ for you to come back so that we can finish it!"

"Here, we can finish dessert and wine while watching," he suggests, starting to bring the cake over to the living room.

"Brilliant. A good way to get our date back on schedule," she agrees, uncorking the bottle and reaching up to grab two glasses.

Shiro gets the TV set up, changing the channel from Kuro's video game to the TV while Allura scoffs at the leftover snack bag on the couch.

"Ugh, Kuro," she mutters, taking a moment to take the snack back to the kitchen before returning to sit herself between Shiro's legs. She pulls up the blanket from the other end of the couch around her, leaning back and settling into Shiro with a big sigh.

"Atrocious. Even this blanket smells like that awful cheese snack," she later scoffs, tossing it aside.

"I'll put it in the washer later," Shiro assures her. With his free hand, he reaches forward to bring her a glass of wine. She thanks him as she takes it from his fingers and waits for him to pick up his own glass.

And as the introduction for their show starts, they clink their glasses.

"Happy anniversary," they say to each other, before a sip to mark yet another year together.

And as exciting as the season finale of The Sixth Dimension is, a combination of the wine, the cake, exhaustion, and being very warm and comfortable within each other's arms eventually drives both of them to sleep by minute twenty.

It's not until Shiro's phone buzzes when Shiro stirs awake, drowsy from alcohol and the unexpected sleep. The complete darkness is very disorienting and it takes him a moment to remember what exactly was happening before he had drifted off. He groans, shifting his legs and looks down, feeling a heavy weight on his body and shimmering white fluff on his chest — and he realizes Allura is still sound asleep on top of him.

Shiro does his best to reach down to the floor where his phone has dropped without disturbing his wife in the slightest. He turns on his screen and squints at the bright light, quickly reading whatever text message has come his way.

Actually he's missed more than one, and they're all from Keith, reminding him it's time to pick up Kuro. Shiro checks the time, and indeed, it is close to ten o'clock. And so with another groan, he throws his phone next to the empty box of cake and decides to wake Allura up.

Just a little rustle of her hair is enough to lift her back to consciousness.

"…what?" she asks, looking completely disoriented.

He smiles and kisses her on the forehead, brushing her hair off her face. "We have to go pick Kuro up."

She nods drowsily. "Okay…" she says in soft voice, moving off him and standing up, stretching.

"We can finish the wine later," he tells her, getting off the couch and leaning over to pick up the bottle and the box of cake. "Why don't you go get ready?" he suggests, before going to the kitchen to clean everything up.

But when he returns to the living room, she's still standing in the same spot as where he left her, with a sad smile on her face. "So much for our date," she pouts. "We slept through half of it!"

"A well-deserved sleep," he replies, putting his hands on her shoulders.

She crosses her arms. "We didn't even use it to our _full_ advantage," she reminds him. "What about our _plans_?"

Shiro looks at her. "There wasn't much else aside from dinner and finishing the show," he says, thinking out loud. "Technically we slept through the episode but I don't think it could have been that good if we fell asleep through it."

She wrinkles her nose. "No, it was good. I just fell asleep."

He shrugs. "Yeah, I don't remember."

"No, but we had _plans,_ " she reminds him. "For _after_ the show."

He doesn't remember that either. "I don't—" and then it hits him. "Oh, well… we can save that for another night."

"Yes, but now the kids aren't home and we don't have to feel paranoid about one of them hearing us or walking in on us," she urges, pouting. "We had _such_ a great opportunity and we missed it!"

He hugs her with empathy. "Sorry," he laughs softly. "Sleep seemed so much better at the time, you know?" Then he considers and looks back at her. "You know," he tells her. "I haven't texted Keith back yet."

"Oh, no, we can't have them take care of Kuro for another hour," she says. "They have their own lives to get back to."

"I'm sure Keith and Lance can hold on for a little longer," he teases, and then furrows his eyebrows. "Another _hour_?" he asks in disbelief. "Maybe we're not as quick as when we were younger but I don't think we're _that_ old quite yet."

She raises an eyebrow. "Is that a challenge, Takashi Shirogane?"

"I'd like to see you make it one."

She looks at him coyly. "Alright," she says, and then without warning, she jumps onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him furiously all over his face. "This time," she says, between pecks, "is going to convince you to switch your international flight next week so you can go to Kuro's soccer match, have dinner with Juni and Alfor, arrange plans for all three of them _and_ have the rest of the night alone with me before your mother comes back the following day."

Feeling a rush of excitement overwhelm him, he plays along with her, but not before forgetting to grab his phone. "Wait, wait, wait," he says. "Let me at least tell them we'll be late."

"You're still confident you can last that long?" she teases him as he quickly types on his phone.

Once sending, he drops the phone back onto the couch. "No," he replies. "But I'm not sure if _you_ could last that long."

She gasps, raising her hand to playfully smack him, but he takes her hand in his to catch her fist, before kissing her fingers and carrying her to the bed.

And no, they did not have to close the door that night.

* * *

 **thir13enth**


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